Surveillance Index

Performing Books #1
January 10 - January 27, 2018
  • Voyeurisme à Los Angeles, double page extraite de l’ouvrage Tom, 2013, Doug Rickard

    Surveillance Index, Edition One

  • LE BAL / Matthieu Samadet

  • Chambre d’isolation, service des douanes et de la protection des frontières, San Ysidro, Californie, double page extraite de l’ouvrage Architecture of Authority, Richard Ross, 2007

    Surveillance Index, Edition One

  • LE BAL / Matthieu Samadet

  • Site inconnu, Noordwijk aan zee, double page extraite de Dutch Landscapes, Mishka Henner, 2011

    Surveillance Index, Edition One

  • LE BAL / Matthieu Samadet

  • Site de surveillance, Bald Mountain, 2005, double page extraite de l’ouvrage Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, Trevor Paglen, 2010

    Surveillance Index, Edition One

  • LE BAL / Matthieu Samadet

  • Double page extraite de Kontee Sein, Katja Stuke, 2008

    Surveillance Index, Edition One

  • LE BAL / Matthieu Samadet

LE BAL is launching Performing Books. This new BAL Books initiative will present a collection every January selected by an artist, researcher, or book lover on a specific theme. LE BAL will turn into a research laboratory focused on books’ role as a political gesture and a critical reflection of our society. The first Performing Books event is dedicated to Surveillance Index.

Compiled by the American Mark Ghuneim, this collection of over 200 photography books explores “our the golden age of surveillance” and its visible and invisible inner workings. An expert observer of technological innovation, aware of the challenges of protecting his private life very early on, Ghuneim investigates all the lawful and unlawful procedures the State has put in place to watch its citizens. In the early 1990s, he listed with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) all the CCTV cameras in the streets of New York and created an interactive map which takes you through the parts of Manhattan that aren’t under surveillance. In 2009, six years before the Snowden affair, Ghuneim began collecting books by artists and photographers about “those watching and being watched” men, machines, institutions, governments, spies, hackers, voyeurs and egotists. In LE BAL, over 200 books from his collection Surveillance Index will be available to the public.

« The iconography of surveillance is part of our daily lives and has inspired a multitude of artworks » — Mark Ghuneim

In the spirit of a genuine whistle blower, Ghuneim is raising the alarm, using this collection and the plethora of visual material it represents as a wake-up call raising awareness and resistance. Which personal and collective civil liberties are we sacrificing at the altar of security ? How do our personal, intimate, identifying desires create the tools to control us? Which political, social, cultural and legal incidents has this provoked ? What behaviour can we adopt in order to disappear from the CCTV screens and meta-databases ?

To discuss these questions and stimulate public debate, LE BAL has invited sociologists, activists, artists, thinkers and journalists to participate in the programme.

 

Mark Ghuneim will open Performing Books by discussing the starting point and activist nature of his collection and his self-published 2017 book Surveillance Index which details the inventory of his findings.

 

Program

Thursday 11/01 - 8PM : Talk with Mark Ghuneim

The new-yorker art collector will open the Performing Books premiere by presenting the genesis of his collection of surveillance books. Talk with Emilie Lauriola, in head of La librairie du BAL.

Friday 12/01 - 8PM : Screening of Somewhere to disappear
The movie Somewhere to disappear follows the photograph Alec Soth in his journey across USA and highlights a modern fantasy : Ghosting. The director Laure Flammarion will introduce the screening. 
 
Saturday 13/01 - From 4PM to 6PM - "Publishing
 & Surveillance"
An afternoon dedicated to the theme of the publishing of surveillance and Internet pratices books with booksignings and talks with Thomas Mailaender (Parental Advisory), Esther Hovers (False Positives), but also videp conferences with Klara Källstrom et Thobias Fäldt (Wikiland 2 & 3) and Thomas Albdorf (General view).

Wednesday 17/01 - 8PM : Cinema & Video program : "Overexposed"

Thursday 18/01 - 8PM : Round #9 with the EHESS "Territories under Surveillance"

Debate organized by LE BAL and the EHESS with Alexandre Rios-Bordes, historian of Intelligence and national security (Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7, member of the Institut Marcel Mauss Ehess-Cnrs) and the artists Gwenola Wagon and Stéphane Degoutin.
Moderator : Sylvain Bourmeau, journalist, producer of "La Suite dans les idées" on France Culture and professor at the EHESS.

Saturday 20/01 - 10AM to 6PM : Workshop /  Mishka Henner
The photograph Mishka Henner presents a one-day workshop around the issues of the image on social networks.

Saturday 20/01 -  8PM : Scorpion Violente / Concert
Scorpion Violente will perform at the BAL with synthetic waves and his dark minimal music, hypnotic-like.

Wednesday 24/01 - 8PM : Mondkopf / Concert

The toulousain Mondkopf mix melodic rhythmes and brutality, inspired by drone, noise, hip-hop, and metal, will perform at LE BAL. 

Thursday 25/01 - From 8PM to midnight : RYBN : "Internet Anonymat" / Workshop & Performance

Workshop with reading and performance by the artistic group RYBN, will make the autopsy  of predictive surveillance system PredPol.

Friday 26/01  - 8PM : "Russia & the Cyberspace"

Discussion between Tania Rakhamova, journalist and director, and Kevin Limonier, in head of the Observatoire du Cyberespace Russophone, about informationnal russian strategies on Internet.

Saturday 27/01 - 3PM to 4:30PM : Worskhop "CRYPTOPARTY"
It is still possible to disappear ? The hackerspace Reset presents an informationnal workshop, to warn about tools to protect your Internet privacy. 

Saturday 27/01 - 5PM : Talk & Launch of the book Shadows of the state with Lewis Bush

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Meeting with Mark Ghuneim

Thursday January 11, 2018 - 8 PM

Somewhere to disappear

Screening and meeting with Laure Flammarion

Friday January 13, 2018 - 8 PM

Overexposed

Film series around Surveillance Index

Wednesday January, 17 - 8 pm

Workshop : Mishka Henner

Remote Possibilities

Saturday January 20, 2018

SOLD-OUT / scorpion violente

Live

Saturday January 21, 2018 - 8 PM

SOLD-OUT / Mondkopf

Live

Wednesday January 24, 2018 - 8 PM

CRYPTOPARTY

Workshop

Saturday January 27, 2018 - 3 PM

Edition & Surveillance

Meeting & signing

Saturday January 14, 2018 - 4 PM

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